Becoming Lucius
by LynstHolin
Summary: Non-pairing fic A portrait of the relationship between Abraxas Malfoy and his son Lucius.


This is the same version of Abraxas that appears in my fics 'The Seekers,' 'The White Cliffs of Dover,' 'Be My Love Monkey,' and 'Harry Potter and the City of Shadows.'

...

Abraxas was watching his son from the corner of his eye as he browsed a catalog of fabric samples. Twilfit and Tatting's had a new clerk, a thirty-something woman with a generous bosom that she was obviously quite proud of. "New uniforms for a new school year, then, love? All right, let's get you measured," the woman chirped. She produced a tape measure from a sleeve of her robes and started placing it across Lucius' shoulders, around his chest, around his waist. Abraxas noted that she was letting her hands linger quite a bit longer than was absolutely necessary, and was pushing her breasts together with her upper arms so that they popped out above the neckline of her robes. Lucius turned red when she knelt down to measure his inseam. When her hand started stroking up the inside of Lucius' thigh, Abraxas abruptly stood up, scraping the chair loudly across the granite floor. The woman jumped.

"Please refrain from molesting my son." The woman was taller than him, but Abraxas still managed to look down his nose at her.

"I was merely doing my job," the woman sniffed.

"You were merely groping a boy half your age. Please behave yourself, or I will take my custom elsewhere. And keep your bosom under control."

The woman went back to work with a sour look on her face, but she was all business. Lucius was still red, looking at anything but the clerk. As many times as this sort of thing happened, the boy was still terribly embarrassed by it.

Lucius was just too beautiful for his own good. He had his mother's ethereally-lovely facial features and slim height combined with his father's striking coloring; he was, frankly, stunning. At the tender age of seventeen, he was constantly receiving attention that he didn't know how to deal with: middle-aged women trying to sit on his lap, drunk men grabbing his bottom on the street, hooting Muggle construction workers who seemed to be under the impression that he was female... Lucius' white skin betrayed emotion easily, and his blushes just seemed to provoke his harassers even more. Abraxas got so frustrated. He wanted his son to toughen up a bit, and to perhaps give the next man that tried to drag him into a dark alley a black eye.

"My, what a handsome young man your son has grown into," someone said into Abraxas' ear. It was Velma Goyle, the mother of one of Lucius' school mates. She was stuffed into chartreuse robes that didn't suit her figure one bit.

_My, what a cretinous slab of meat your son is_, Abraxas thought. "He's also very intelligent, and he is going to be Head Boy this year."

"Mm. That's nice." Velma wandered over to Lucius, who was trying on hats while the store clerk went into the back room of the shop. The boy put on a silver-gray lambskin number that made the color of his eyes pop, and Velma gazed at him with her mouth hanging slack. "Look at how long your hair has gotten," she exclaimed, reaching a hand out to the black ribbon that held it in a low pony-tail as if she was going to undo it. Abraxas cleared his throat, and Velma snatched her hand back.

The shop door opened and Gracchus Goyle came lumbering in. He was a couple of years behind Lucius in school, and infinitely behind in brains and charm. Abraxas was sure that Lucius was friends with him mainly because the hulking youth's presence kept harassers away. Abraxas was less than pleased with the way Gracchus looked at Lucius these days. Gracchus would no longer be asked to spend the night at Malfoy Manor, Abraxas vowed.

"Father, may I go to Fortescue's with Gracchus?" Lucius was as tall as a man, but he was still young enough to be excited about going to get ice cream. He put the lambskin hat in his father's hands. Abraxas determined that he was going to 'forget' to buy it; it was far too attractive on Lucius. The boy had inherited his mother's discerning eye when it came to fashion.

"Yes, you may. I'll come to fetch you in half an hour." Abraxas watched his son leave. Gracchus walked a little behind Lucius, eyes roaming. Abraxas considered the feasibility of casting a glamour on his son that would make him look like a human toad.

...

"You have to do as I say! I'm the Head Boy!" Lucius said petulantly. He'd had to chase Prefect Aloysius Greengrass down for half an hour, growing ever more frustrated as the boy openly avoided him.

"Oooh, Pretty Princess is Head Boy," Aloysius said in a sing-song voice. He knew how much Lucius hated that nickname.

Joey Borst, the American transfer student, laughed so hard he doubled over. "What's so funny?" Lucius snapped.

"Do you know what 'head' means?" Joey asked. Magnus Flint and Aloysius indicated that they did not know, and Joey explained at length and in great detail, using some very disturbing gestures.

Lucius turned bright red. "That's not funny!"

"So, Head Boy," Joey sneered, "Are you going to live up to your title? I've got a little something for the prettiest girl at Hogwarts."

Lucius opened his mouth, then closed it again. When Joey started lifting up his robes, Lucius turned away and scurried toward the nearest exit. This wasn't how it was supposed to be! As Head Boy, he was in charge of telling the Prefects what to do. He'd told Aloysius to help orient the first years, and the boy had flat-out laughed at him. Damn it, this wouldn't have happened if Gracchus had been with him.

And there the lumbering beast was, finally, loping toward Lucius with a stupid grin on his broad face. "Where have you been?" Lucius demanded.

"Sorry. There was pie."

"Come on. We're going to be late for Quidditch practice."

"Aw, you don't need to practice. You're already the best Seeker in school."

"Yes, but you're a terrible a Beater."

"Can't we just spend some time alone together?"

" 'Alone together' is an oxymoron."

"Oxy-what?"

"Never mind." Lucius raised an eyebrow when Gracchus grabbed him by the arm. "What?"

"I-I-" Gracchus' mouth worked a bit as his slow-moving brain ground its gears. "You're not really like a boy."

Lucius tried to pull out of the other boy's grip. "Thank you very much," he snarked.

"I mean, I don't like boys, not that way. But I like you. You're more like a girl." Gracchus leaned in and then all Lucius could see were puckered, fish-like lips coming toward him.

...

Abraxas' eyebrows drew together. "Is Lucius in trouble?" He sat in a chair in front of the Headmaster's desk. Fawkes was sitting on a wooden perch next to him, grooming his feathers.

Dumbledore steepled his hands. "Oh, no, not at all. He's just had another one of his... breakdowns."

The door to the office opened, and Lucius stepped in, looking as nervous as a fawn. His face brightened when he saw Abraxas. "Father! You've come!"

"Would you like a little time alone?" Dumbledore asked.

"I think that would be good," Abraxas replied.

Lucius stood near the door until the Headmaster left, and then he threw himself upon his father and started to sob. "They call me Pretty Princess and give me no respect for being Head Boy and keep telling me to do perverted things because of my title!" he wailed.

Oh, Merlin. Not again. This was precisely the sort of thing that Abraxas was not equipped to deal with. "And Gracchus tried to kiss me!"

"That ape tried to kiss you? I'll kill him!" Abraxas attempted to get up, intent on hunting young Goyle down, but Lucius was clutching his waistcoat and wouldn't let go.

Abraxas had duelled the dark wizard Mordechai the Mordant and had nearly been turned into an invertebrate. He had been clawed by a chupacabra in Guadalajara. He'd battled a J'ba Fofi spider with a leg span exceeding his height in the Congo. He would have preferred reliving any of these experiences to dealing with a hysterical seventeen-year-old boy. And he really did want to hunt Gracchus Goyle down and hurt him. Instead, he found himself pinned to a chair while his son cried all over him. He lifted a hand and placed it on his son's head. Lucius leaned into the touch. "There, there," he said, for lack of anything better. Oh, this was not in Abraxas' skill set. _At all_. Why did he have a son that cried so much?

"I want to go home, Father," Lucius sobbed.

"You have to finish your schooling," Abraxas said impatiently.

"Could you not get me a tutor?"

"There is a certain prestige to graduating with honors from Hogwarts."

"I don't care! I hate it here!"

"You need to toughen up, Lucius!" Abraxas barked. Lucius flinched and sobbed harder. "Oh, I'm sorry. You're just... so much like your mother."

Lucius looked up at his father, his almond-shaped, long lashed silver-gray eyes teary and happy at the same time. "Really? I am?"

Abraxas had meant it as an observation, not a compliment, but it was obvious that Lucius had taken it that way. Of course, Lucius had never known his mother, with her having died shortly after giving birth to him. She'd been a high-strung beauty who had wanted far more from Abraxas than he was able to give. Yes, Lucius was exactly like Elenore. "It's a tough world out there, son. You have to be able to take it. You're far too soft. You need to-to-to... to be like a turtle."

Lucius gave his father a quizzical look. "What do you mean?"

"Build a shell around yourself. When they call you Pretty Princess, it will hit the shell, not you."

Lucius stared at his father for a long moment. "That's what you do, isn't it?" he asked.

Abraxas shifted under his son's weight and glanced to a far corner of the room. "We're talking about you, Lucius. If you wear the shell long enough, it will become you."

...

Lucius barricaded himself in the prefects' bathroom and stood in front of the full length mirror. He drew himself up to his full height and looked down his nose. He experimented with the angle at which he held his head, with the set of his lips, how far back he drew his shoulders. He narrowed his eyes and discovered the most perfectly arrogant expression on his face. "Pretty Princess?" he drawled, "I believe that particular nickname reveals far too much about your sexual fantasies, Greengrass. I cannot fulfill your request, Borst, because I am sure I would have great trouble locating that particular part of your anatomy. Ma'am, please remove that age-spotted, arthritic claw that you call a hand from my posterior."

It wasn't a turtle shell that Lucius imagined. It was armor. Breastplate, gauntlets, greaves, a helmet. He would cover everything about him that was soft with it. And he would become the armor.

But, of course, the helmet had a visor which flipped up to reveal his eyes. That was just for his father.


End file.
